UMECUnited Mining Exploration Commission: A group of friends playing JumpGate-- "a MMORPG that launched smoothly, breaks from fantasy character setting, emphasizes PvP, and is the first persistent world space simulator that nobody talks about." ~Scorch

Anyone still here...? I get the impression quite a lot of knowledge has recently departed from the US server... Oh well, worth a go:

I've carelessly attempted to write a 'trading 101'. It examines basic economic concepts, the use of data and tools, newbie strategy, survival tips for cargo pilots, and advanced strategies. It's rather long, has holes in, rambles and is probably inaccurate. It needs a few people with a vague idea of what's going on to pick it apart and tell me it to me straight ;) . It would also useful highlight known differences between EU and US, which are starting to get confusing.

The draft article is here(new link). Please avoid citing it elsewhere as finished until it's be hammered into shape slightly better. It's currently work in progress.

Basically finished now I think.

Last edited by timski on Wed Aug 28, 2002 5:06 pm; edited 1 time in total

1. Very small quantities put onto the market don't seem to result in as many of what you want being produced per unit of Electronics as would be the case with a larger drop. Don't ask for reasons, suffice to say that 20 appears better than 5, 5 better than 1. But see note 3 for a word of warning here.

2. Before you start, consider what else may be about to use up your Electronics. If you want Hitmen, you want to try and prevent your valuable Electronics being used to make cameras and missiles, since that will use up the Electronics faster, and result in few Hitmen produced. There are a variety of tricks to doing this. Some are very extreme, and clearly only worth seeing through if you are seeking to make large volumes of something that you can ensure a high black market profit:

(a) Find out what conflicts. For example, other uses of Electronics at TriPoint are Witnesses and missiles, in addition to Hitmen.

(b) Check their production requirements. For each conflicting item, is at least one of the other commodities required for production unavailable on the station? If no, you're going to have to do some leg work, but keep reading because physically emptying the market doesn't empty it. If yes, you may still have an unseen problem, read on.

(c) Even if the market appears to be emptied of at least one other production requirement for each of those things we don't want to produce, there may still be a stock in the station's hidden inventory. The only way to get it out is to force it to be used to produce something else. For example, to clear fuel cells, maybe force the production of power plants by bringing in some Matter Converters. Sit and watch the market until powerplant production ceases. Ceasation means that fuel cells are no longer in the hidden inventory, or there in tiny quantities only. It generally takes about an hour to clear the hidden inventory of a commodity if all the production processes that commodity is used in are running; however if you are trying to clear the hidden inventory using only a proportion of production processes, you may have a lot longer to wait. Some commodities are now almost impossible to clear out. For example, Synthetics at TriPoint could be emptied by adding Antimony and Chemicals to make Rubber; but Antimony is in short supply, and the only other things to use Synthetics are missiles, which also need Electronics.

(d) Beware of production caps. For example, if Thorns have a production cap of 4k, they won't be produced beyond that level regardless of what is available by way of raw materials for production. In extreme cases it may be worth moving some equipment around, but beware of tax loses. Similarly, if you want to stop the production of something like cameras or scanners, it may be easier to move them in from another station until the production cap is reached. Cameras and scanners are fairly cheap compared to other equipment.

(e) If someone arrives and sells one of the commodities required to produce something you don't want, but have just spent the last two hours clearing, you'll have a problem. Worse, you may not even see it arrive because small quantities will go straight into the hidden inventory. An extreme way to avoid this is to think a little about how other pilots find their cargoes and pick their runs. For example, if you wanted to prevent missile production it might be safer to prevent the production of Synthetics at Oct stations. A nice way to do that is to remove as much Carbon as possible from Oct stations. carbon is only readily available in unregulated space, and so doesn't often turn up (no missions and high risks for low short term profit). Alternatively bias the stockpiles so that one station looks a better place to produce than an other. Synthetics at OC have a much higher chance of arriving at TriPoint than Synthetics at OP, which tend to drift into Sol space. At the very least, if you keep an eye on an economy tracker, you'll get a warning that Synthetics may be in danger of turning up.

(f) In some cases production of an item the station makes may be conflicting, for example Optics at TriPoint, which join with Electronics to make cameras. The arrival of rogue raw materials to make Optics is a problem, however, you may be able to stem the tide. It seems that recently produced commodities are first placed on the public market, and only at the next cycle are they used in production. Consequently so long as you spot what is happening, and have space, you can try to buy up the commodity as it is being produced, thus stopping it filling the hidden inventory, or getting used in production. I'm not entirely sure this works in all cases. Still better to not have to deal with the problem to start with.

(g) You may be lucky enough to come across a station/set of commodities that have already been primed in such a way. That is increasingly the case, and since a few of the measures in (e) have occurred, a lot of these markets are fairly stable.

(h) Of the standard Rak/Hit/Duel uses for Electronics that are most popular among traders atm, Hyp is the easiest to prime (only 1 missile to worry about, although on the downside you have a long way to go should you need to move things around), TriPoint fairly easy, and GP a bit of a pain, particularly if you end up having to force something like Ammunition production - you feel really silly hauling mined Aluminum in from Quant and then having to slowly feed it onto the market to stop it being dragged off on BPC or mission runs.

(i) If after you are sure you have everything primed and drop some Electronics in you see a small amount of production you didn't expect, don't panic. You may simply need to clear that 0.1 Synthetics that are lurking and remained because (I presume) the commodity you forced the production of required more than 0.1 per unit. Again, not entirely sure precisely what's going on, but if, say, one missile appears you won't expecting, that could be it. If you get 30 new missiles, you may have a problem.

3. Don't get too enthusiastic. Dropping 50 Electronics on the market probably means that you'll completely fill the hidden inventory and over-spill onto the public market. There is a chance someone else will buy them up. You'll lose control over production, so when those Synthetics do appear, you'll already be committed to large scale production of, erm, Sirrus missiles. Similarly don't over-produce. Don't produce so many that they are left on the station market at the end - it's hard to get 2 million for a Hitman when the station sells them for 950k .

4. If, like me, you lag horribly, you'll find you will lose a lot of the produced equipment to other pilots in the same station, simply because they will see it a second earlier than you. The easiest way around this is to produce things at a time of the day when there aren't many people around. Fortunately most of the stations where the nicer bits of equipment are produced are fairly quiet.

5. Mostly avoid custom producers, where they exist. They will use a whole unit of Electronics to make one item of equipment, while the station might be using a tenth. The exception is if you can't be bothered with all this and just want one or two of something for personal use, happen to have picked up a few units of Electronics, and don't want to pay some of the silly prices that certain people are trying to sell these things for.